White House says it's nearly completed executive actions on gun control
Vice President Joe Biden will announce Tuesday that the Obama administration has "completed or made significant progress" on 21 of 23 executive actions to try to reduce gun violence developed after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.
They include ending the freeze on gun violence research, addressing barriers that keep states from submitting records to the national background check system and making sure federal law enforcement agencies trace guns recovered in investigations.
Biden will give his first extensive remarks on gun control since the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected a slew of gun control proposals – expanding background checks, renewing an assault weapons ban and limiting the size of ammunition clips – in April. He will use his 1 p.m. event at the White House comlex to again urge Congress to act.
"The administration has work to do…but Congress must also do its job," a senior administration said in a preview of Biden's remarks.
The official declined to say who Obama or Biden has met with on Capitol Hill to try to change votes, but said that Republican and Democratic senators who voted against the popular bill to expand background checks have faced an intense backlash.
"The politics of the issue are starting to change," the offical said.
Following the school shooting in December left 20 children dead, Obama pressed Congress to pass the nation’s most aggressive gun control plan in generations. He also proposed 23 executive actions that required no congressional approval.
Also on Tuesday, the left-leaning Center for American Progress will call on Congress to remove language from the annual appropriations bill that prevents the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from requiring dealers to conduct a once-a-year audit on their inventories for missing guns. Obama removed the language from his proposed fiscal year 2014 budget proposal to Congress.
Below is a list of executive actions:
--Require agencies to send all relevant records to the background check system.
--Require the Department of Health and Human Services to assess and address unnecessary legal barriers that prevent states from making appropriate data available to the background check system.
--Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
--Review categories of dangerous people prohibited from having guns.
--Give law enforcement the ability to run a background check on someone before returning a seized gun.
--Provide effective training on responding to active shooter situations to law enforcement officers, first responders and school officials.
--Publish data on lost and stolen guns.
--Maximize enforcement of gun crime.
--Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.
--Encourage the development of innovative gun safety technology.
--Review and enhance safety standards for gun locks and gun safes.
--Conduct research on the causes and prevention of gun violence.
--Clarify that no law prevents health care providers from warning law enforcement authorities about threats of violence.
--Protect the rights of health care providers to talk to their patients about gun safety.
